PCGuyIV continues his TT series this week by asking us what three changes we would make to WordPress to improve our blogging experience. I am going to relate my ideas to the iPhone app, where I both compose and read posts most of the time.
1. By far, the most annoying thing to me in the app is line spacing, and this is nothing new, though it is more irritating in the block editor. Sometimes I want to single space a poem (or whatever), which is fine when you’re at a keyboard and can shift-return, but you can’t do that on a phone. I have to dive into the code and painstakingly put the “br” (break) code in after each line. Ugh…
2. I would like all posts to open in the reader 100% of the time unless I specifically click a button to visit the site. I hate reading posts in a browser because you can’t save them and it’s more cumbersome to comment. I have no idea why some posts flip me out of the app and into Safari, but I suspect it has to do with ads. 🙄
3. Why do I have to type the “alt text” in again when I grab an image from my media library? I obsessively went through my pics and gave all of them a name and an alt. This should appear with the image when I use it from the app (it appears when I compose a post in the browser). Fix, please!
I realize that uppermost on everyone’s mind today is… what is Paula doing this year for NaNoWriMo?
Honestly, I had forgotten about the whole thing until my friend Roy mentioned it. I have generally participated in one form or another every year except once ~ oops twice (just checked my profile on the site), but with the plague and the election dominating the news, I hadn’t thought about it.
But now I have. I’ve decided to participate by finishing the novel (Ghosted) I began in 2017, worked on in 2018, and have been jabbering about ever since. I guess I bailed on NaNo last year due to moving. With that in mind, I wrote a couple pages this morning before work, instead of obsessing over the news.
Yay! The fact is that I actually have made tons of progress on this novel and it is over 80,000 words now. I just had some issues with how to end it. Also, I will need to edit before I can publish, but since I edit as I go, that shouldn’t be a huge deal.
Okay, the happiness engineers say they are working on the disappearing images in the app issue, but in the meantime, don’t make an image the first element of your post ~ also Ashley’s featured image solution works if you must have an image first. I did that and it worked. For this post, I’m trying the other thing (putting text first).
What’s the tallest building you’ve been to the top of?
I’ve been to the top of the Sears Tower in Chicago and also the Space Needle in Seattle. Whichever one of those is taller, that one.
What do you do to keep fit?
Run around in circles, leap to conclusions, skate on thin ice, and laugh my ass off!
What’s your jack-o-lantern carved to look like?
The last man I slept with, so I can set him on fire, mash him up to bits, and run him over with my car. Just kidding! I’m so over that whole thing, pffft… 🎃
Do you have hope or have you lost it?
I’m very anxious about the US election. If the impotus wins again, things will keep getting worse as they have all year. If Biden wins, I’m afraid bunches of rightwing gun nuts will go bananas. 😳
GRATITUDE QUESTION:
Feel free to share something you’re grateful for! Images and photos or poems, essays or free writing (stream of consciousness) pieces are all acceptable! AND you don’t have to do this part, it’s always optional!
I’m grateful the WP happiness engineers replied to me immediately about the image issue, offered me a temporary solution, and are fixing the problem. They say! 👻
Smiles and positive posts are all well and good, but sometimes I need to vent a bit. How about you? That’s what The Monday Peeve is all about, a chance to blow off a little steam at the beginning of the week, so then we can go merrily on our way once again (hah). I’ll pick a topic that’s on my mind, but you can vent about whatever you please, here in comments or on your own blog. Grab the photo, use the TMP tag, link back to me (or not), and Bob’s yer uncle. I do reserve the right to delete any links that offend my delicate sensibilities. So far, none have, but it could happen. I have feelings!
Today’s peeve is about WP itself… more specifically, the app. It has nothing to do with the block editor. 🤣 It’s about missing things on my reader (old issue with a new wrinkle), which has me super stressed out. I’m talking about my own stuff! I follow myself, as you do, and I’ve noticed lately that my images are randomly not appearing in my posts even though they exist. I use an image (sometimes more than one) in every post now, so no post of mine should ever appear with text only. Yet, these “missing” images actually exist on the post; I know this because when I “visit” a post at my main site, the image appears. Why is it missing from the app feed? Sometimes it’s an image I’ve had around a while, such as a Bitmoji, and sometimes it’s a new image I’ve downloaded from someone else’s prompt post. And I’m not talking about that dreaded X in a box you get when an image has been deleted. No. I’m talking about a post appearing as if no image was ever uploaded with it, when it was. 🤯
I like using the app on my phone ~ it’s super convenient for reading posts and saving the prompts I might want to do later. But this missing image issue has me SUPER MEGA ANNOYED! Naturally, I’m not going to bother asking for help from WP because (1) I doubt they will even understand what I mean; and (2) they never help. Plus, sometimes the image appears, so with my luck, they’d look and see one and think I’m just crazy. I may be crazy, but it is a FACT that WP is glitchy and irritating regardless.
Look at this evidence…
Recently published posts in my app tab on Saturday morning.The same freaking posts as they appear sans images when I look up my blog on the app!
Happy Halloween week! 🎃 Don’t forget to remember your peeves for next Monday! 👻
When I saw today that the mighty Nox has returned with the Daily Spur prompts, I shrieked like a banshee. Well, not really. I don’t even know what a banshee is. All I know is that if you scream like one, that’s a lot of screaming. But not having the Daily Spur prompt in my list was certainly an intangibleloss. I did try to huntthem down, but it appeared they were gone forever. And then poof! this morning they reappeared like magic. Creating new bloggery was a cinch when all the prompt words joined together in my mind.
Fandango provocatively asks today how we feel about blog “awards” and why.
PCGuyIV’s post on the subject reflects my thoughts ~ don’t much care for “awards” these days. This in no way denigrates my blogging buddies who have previously nominated me for an “award.” I appreciate when someone thinks of me! 😍
The reason I put “award” in quotes is because it’s not actually an award, as we all know. As PC observes, it’s a chain letter, and chain letters, like all MLM schemes, have one point: to accumulate goodies at the top of the chain. In this case, the goodies are links back to the “award” originator to boost his or her views. This is why early on I quit linking back to the original. I linked only to the blogger who nominated me.
That’s one issue. The other is that in general “awards” contain too many questions and they’re boring. How many times am I gonna jabber on about why I started blogging or do I prefer tea or coffee or whatever silly thing that no one actually cares about? Bleh. Rory with his Friday Four and Melanie with her Share Your World have the right idea: four interesting questions. That’s enough! 👍🏻
I have noticed that many bloggers dislike “awards” and/or won’t respond, so at a certain point I quit nominating people even if I was okay with answering the questions. Then I started skipping more and more of the noms myself. (No offense, as I said.) I was thinking the other day that I haven’t seen one in my feed for a while, and I’d like to take this opportunity to pat myself on the back for contributing to their absence. 🤩
Dr. Tanya continues her blogging about bloggers’ blogs blog bloggery by asking what we did wrong way back when. My wayback is probably older than most, since I began all this in 2003, with a blog on blogspot named “Ultrablog ~ Purple prose from Orange County… it’s ULTRAVIOLET!” That was my Usenet nickname and a group of us were fond of trying new fads. I took to blogging right away and even purchased a template to match my purple theme. Loads of my fellow Usenetters have disappeared from Blogland and simply hang out on Facebook now. But I like blogging best of all social media. 😍
My posts back then were about me and my opinions. I didn’t post much or any fiction/poetry; instead I blabbed on about my takes on the news or annoying incidents and just whatever. I did jabber way more about my kids, people I knew, and even work a little. I hate to say this, but because I was married to a lawyer, I felt safe in doing as I pleased. I had no fear of writing absolutely horrible stuff to other Usenetters while engaging in “combat prose” (it was mutual) and adding my bit of badness to the atmosphere of awfulness that has become exponentially worse as time goes on. My Usenet attitude/persona carried over into my blogging. 😎
Most of my posts were short then, except a few frothy rants, and I generally flung some nonsense out 2-3 times per day. I received tons of comments and views because I had linked up with other bloggers who wanted to increase their stats, and we all visited each other’s posts constantly. I got totally caught up in the stats obsession and felt bummed out when my views sunk below 300/day or a post failed to get comments in the double digits. I participated in blog arguments and deliberately took on controversial views, all in order to get more “hits.” Finally, I ended up in a nasty flamewar (over pit bulls, lol), flamers began impersonating each other, my comment section got wrecked, and I quit. 😡
My mistakes were obvious: worrying about stats, deliberately fanning flames, jumping into arguments at other blogs, and revealing too much about my life, including photos. I consoled myself that I did less of all this than the super-popular mommy bloggers, but even so. Ick! 😝🙁😢
I missed blogging though. I began a few new boring ones, a couple private ones, and this one… which ended up as my favorite. The others are all gone with some archived in my own files. When I started on WordPress, I was determined not to care about stats, not to post about politics, and not to get involved in arguments. If anyone starts crap here, I ban them. I did make some new mistakes though ~ when I was dating (🤮), I would post about some of the things that upset me or that I found funny. Then, when I met someone I actually liked (rare), I’d frantically delete all the dating posts before they could read them. Rinse, repeat.
I haven’t deleted a post here in a long time. I doubt I would even if I met someone I liked romantically. They’d just have to deal with who I really am, and vice versa. 🤪 Not that I can imagine this happening imminently or even ever! 🤣 Anyway, I still enjoy blogging a lot, love the feedback on my writing, and have no plans to quit, despite the periodic glitches we have to deal with. Personally, I find the block editor a lot less annoying than that jerk who was copying our content a while ago. There will always be something…
Soooo, I have tried to avoid bitching too much about WordPress, as imperfect as it is. Not to mention that I don’t hate the block editor (heresy!), though of course I have empathyfor anyone experiencing difficulties getting their writing to publish. The thing is, blogging is my favorite form of social media by far, and I’m super grateful it’s surviving when almost everyone else just twitters and faceplops. I blame a short attention span… I remember when some of my writer friends kept interesting blogs, but now they just quote boring political crap on FB, or repost dumb memes. I guess it’s easier. 🙄
H O W E V E R!
I had the damndest time getting my last post to publish properly. And this has nothing to do with the cursed BE because I was using the app in classic mode. Ooh, maybe they’re screwing with the CE to get us to switch over entirely (I use the BE on my laptop). I had to keep fixing it and republishing it to get all the links to “take.” They would disappear in the process and I’d view the post only to find them poofed. So maddening!
I understand that the outcome of writing to WP for help is zippo, nada, crickets. So why bother? Instead I’m venting here, especially because this wasn’t a one-off. I’ve had to repost other pieces of writing due to formatting glitches. Sometimes my video links don’t show up with previews, and it looks stupid when the html link sits there alone instead of a nice music image. Btw, I’m in the process of labeling all my saved images, since the WP search function is crap. Not talking about their library, but trying to find something I’ve used before and saved in mine. Yes, that’s a differentissue, but why not throw everything into the Big Casserole of Doom?
Fandango’s Dog Days prompt today asks us to thank our followers/readers, so here ya go! Thanks! I really appreciate all y’all and, as I said yesterday, interaction is my main motivation for blogging, so keep it coming.
On another note, I have been reading more and more that bloggers are very upset with the changes in WordPress. While the block editor doesn’t bug me, I do feel your pain. Why change things that are working? Why make the process inconvenient for peeps? It just doesn’t make sense. Focusing only on business bloggers is going to backfire on WP, imo. There are still a lot of hobbyists and some of us pay. The ones who don’t still provide a platform for advertisers, who pay. This forced annoyance is pretty misguided imo. 🙁
Blogger dot com still exists however. Some of my friends never liked WP and are still there. I have a blogger blog still up that I haven’t been using (deleted the old content) and would have no problem cycling back to. The navigation is pretty simple and a blog is easy to set up… all you need is a google account.
The one thing I’m unsure about is if they have a feed similar to WP. I would think one should exist somewhere. If not, we can use blogrolls or a separate feed reader, such as Feedspot. It’s all good. 🙂
Let me know your thoughts on continuing this thing we do! 😻
I meant to do the Dog Days’ prompt last night before bed, but I began a puzzle, got sleepy, and conked out. To punish me for this neglect, my guilty conscience kept waking me, and Monday morning said hello with a migraine. (Yay for meds! Feeling better already.) Generally, however, I make my blog a priority; for example, I have my Thursday Inspirations scheduled out through the end of September. They aren’t topical, so that’s fine. My Monday Peeves could theoretically be scheduled too, but I kinda like to wait until I’m genuinely annoyed with something on the spot, which is never a problem. If I go a week without getting annoyed, my blog fans will be the first to know!
Speaking of blog things, you’ll be happy to know that I am approaching the big 2K of real followers. What do I mean by that? I mean that instead of “cheating” and including Facebook and Twitter “friends” as followers by connecting my blog to those platforms, I disconnected and am counting only those who actually have clicked on follow. Truth is, I don’t mind the lower number because it more accurately reflects how my blog is doing. Obviously, not all 1900+ followers are reading my posts, but that’s okay. They’ve clicked follow, which is what counts.
Honestly, I feel like a fish out of water on FB and Twitter now. People are so niched up, with many focusing only on one topic (usually politics, but not always), and they get lots of friends/followers because their fellow focusers see them as a serious poster. I’m not serious. On FB, I’ll post whatever silly thing crosses my mind, but since my return I don’t post much, compared to my prior account. It’s just not that appealing any longer, though I’m glad to have reconnected with peeps and try to comment here and there without getting into fights. On Twitter, I usually tweet poetry, but I also retweet politics, cat stuff, otters, nom food pics, jokes, whatever. The Serious Poets are not interested in following me. Oh well.
But blogging isn’t like that. The peeps I follow in general post on a variety of topics, and this pleases me. I enjoy knowing that when I go to Fandango’s pad, I might see politics (well, duh) or some cool piece of flash fiction. He also hosts prompts, as do many of us. When I visit Di or Li or Sadje, I might get to read a poem or an essay or flash fiction. There are also a bunch of posters with neato info about music (Jim, John, et al). Of course Rory takes the cake with posts on everything imaginable. This all makes my newsfeed more fun for me. I guess blogging is now considered the fringe of social media. It’s like telling people you still burn CDs for your car. How uh quaint.
